


The Empty Seat

by starshipslytherin



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 10:10:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17486195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starshipslytherin/pseuds/starshipslytherin
Summary: Despite the most terrible heatwave in decades and his foul mood associated with it, Sirius Black unexpectedly learns to appreciate all sorts of art on that stupid trip his brother dragged him on to.





	The Empty Seat

**Author's Note:**

> This is my belated birthday present to my favourite bich, KM. Enjoy <3

It was bloody hot. The sun was burning like some sort of glowing gas orb - which it was, obviously, what a bad comparison - and everybody around was already sweaty before they even entered the bus.  
"I will make the pair of you regret this", Sirius hissed at the two men who were responsible for this disaster.  
"Don't worry, I already do", James sighed, wiping the sweat off his forehead.  
"Hey! I thought you wanted this, too! You said you wanted it!" Regulus folded his arms in agitation and looked accusingly at his boyfriend.  
"Yeah, but I'm dreading the long bus ride. It won't be comfortable if everyone smells."  
"Right", Sirius huffed. "Little git." He glared at Regulus.  
"You're one to complain, are you", the younger man shot back. "At least you'll have two seats of your own."  
"Reg! Don't you like sitting next to me?", James asked, pretending to be shocked and hurt.  
"Not when you reek", said Regulus.  
The bus was filling up. The three men had been avoiding to enter it until the last minute, and finally, Regulus and James went for two seats in the front because Regulus tended to become nauseous on long bus rides, leaving Sirius to a quiet seat in the back. He smugly noticed he was the only one who actually had some space in the form of a second, unoccupied seat next to him, and he was getting comfortable while the engine began to rumble. The tour guide was already in her element delivering a cheerful speech, showcasing her mediocre acting skills, when the last participant of the trip entered. He was a tall and lanky boy around Sirius's age, from what he could tell from the distance, and had dark blonde curls. Sirius didn't pay any attention to him, plucking in his earphones. Nothing about this journey was interesting to him, he had never been a fan of Gothic statues and Baroque buildings. He looked up as he noticed a shadow cast on him and saw the tour guide towering him with the guy shuffling awkwardly behind her, and she was wearing a very fake smile.  
"Excuse me, sir. The young man would like to take a seat." Her teeth were so crooked, gosh.  
"Doesn't he have a seat, then?", Sirius drawled challengingly.  
"We are full, sir. As far as I know, you did not reserve that second seat?" She raised a brow. Sirius thought she had to be the spawn of the devil with her half moon spectacles and bun and toothy fake smile.  
With a sigh, the purpose of which was more dramatic than to convey actual irritation (after all, at least it was just a boy and not the sort of fussy old lady who would lean over him and into his space to take pictures), he removed his rucksack from the unoccupied seat and put it on his lap. He beckoned the guy to sit down next to him.  
The first thing he noticed was the fact that he didn't seem to be sweating and he didn't smell. At least he didn't smell bad. In fact, he smelled nice and clean and fresh.  
"Sorry for taking up the space… I know it's hot outside. I'm Remus. Remus Lupin." He held out his hand for Sirius to shake, which he did.  
"Sirius. My pleasure."  
The second thing Sirius noticed was that everything about this Remus guy looked stitched together. His bag looked as if it was falling apart, his shirt had a few small holes near the seams, and he had two different patches sewn to the knee areas of his trousers. There were even a few faint scars over his face, one of which went just across his nose tip. His brown eyes looked friendly and vivid.  
"Are you excited? - I mean… I love antique arts. We can learn a lot of things from the old masters. I'm studying history and English literature in Oxford." Despite his slightly timid tone of voice, Remus didn't seem to be able to suppress a small, proud smile. "I was really lucky they accepted me."  
Sirius nodded, then leaned back nonchalantly in his seat. "Well, to be honest… I'm wondering why I'm even here. I'm not interested in art." He paused after accompanying the scandalous statement with a languid, dismissive wave of his hand. "I only came for my brother's sake. He's in the front of the bus and probably getting his face snogged off by my best mate. It's fucked up. They're a thing. It's annoying."  
"So aren't you in favour of… you know, two guys -", Remus trailed off.  
"Are you joking? Look at me. I'm wearing a crop top. I'm gay as fuck."  
Remus flinched at the swear word. "Well...maybe you'll enjoy the trip anyway."  
Sirius snorted. "You bet I won't."  
They sat next to each other silently for an hour or so, maybe three. Remus had fallen asleep with his head on Sirius's shoulder, who was trying to ignore it, listening to The Clash.  
The temperature inside the bus rose with every minute that passed. Sirius had started to sweat. Finally, he decided to discard his shirt, and as he wriggled out of it, he accidentally elbowed Remus, who jolted awake. "Sorry", he muttered.  
Remus glanced at him disapprovingly, looking him up and down. "Is this really necessary? You kind of smell, you see."  
"Well, if you keep yours on, you're soon going to be the one to smell", Sirius said pointedly. Remus rolled his eyes and turned around, falling back asleep.  
It took Sirius half an hour until he really had to pee. He didn't want to wake up Remus, who pouted slightly and looked somewhat adorable in his sleep. Eventually, Sirius tried to inelegantly climb over the seats, but slipped and almost kicked Remus in the stomach with his knee.  
"What the heck are you up to?"  
"I need to pee", said Sirius with all the dignity he could muster.  
Remus shook his head and smiled faintly. "You're a special kind of weird, aren't you?"  
"I call it batshit crazy."  
"Fair enough."  
When Sirius returned from his little journey, feeling very relieved, he found Remus doodling into a small, black leather-bound booklet, or sketchbook, and so absorbed by the activity that he didn't budge when Sirius turned up back next to him. Sirius therefore cleared his throat. Remus jumped, then immediately scrambled to get his stuff together and stand up.  
"Sorry, I didn't see you there."  
"It's fine."  
Sirius sat down and watched Remus with a smirk, who was skeptically looking Sirius up and down.  
"Aren't you going to have a seat? You were so eager for that seat."  
"Would you mind putting your trousers back on?"  
"Yes, I would mind. Perhaps you wouldn't understand, since you're still in autumnal attire, but I'm sweating like fuck even now that it's just me and my boxers."  
"The boxers are staying on, though."  
"Oh, are they?"  
Sirius's innocent smile was met with a glare. "Have you ever heard of basic human decency?"  
"Heard of, yes. Ruled out."  
Remus shook his head. "I only met you a few hours ago, but I could already tell you with near certainty that you're the absolute worst."  
"Charming. - What are you doodling?"  
Remus looked slightly offended. "I'm not doodling, I'm drawing."  
"You could draw me. Unless I'm too pretty for you to get my face right, in that case your pencil isn't worthy of the attempt to capture my divine, artful features."  
"The only thing about you that might be referred to as artful would perhaps be your tattoos."  
"They're very artful. They have a deep meaning." Sirius paused to put his long hair in a ponytail, making sure to showcase his biceps in the process, then pointed to the Roman numerals on his chest. "This is my dear little brother's birthday. He's an alright little bloke, a bit stuck up and sophisticated maybe, but there's got to be something about him if my best mate likes him that bloody much, so I figured I'd get that tattooed on my skin. - The M in the circle is for the music, the constellation on my forearm is Andromeda for my only decent cousin, the antlers are for my best mate because he likes deers, and that dog on my upper arm is my spirit animal."  
"Wow. I'm honestly impressed to see so much thought behind all those."  
"You can see the dog better if I flex." Sirius flexed, more than necessary (of course the flexing had little to do with the quality of the tattoo, which he was well aware of).  
Remus stared. "That sure is a very nice… tattoo."  
"Thanks."  
"Do you work out?", he blurted.  
Sirius crossed his arms behind his neck to show off his chest muscles, which he would train very thoroughly every day. "Ugh, I don't really need to because it's all natural, you know, but every now and then after a stressful day, I'll maybe do a few push-ups to get the stress out of my system and all that. Normal stuff."  
"Well, maybe if you're sportive. I prefer books and pencils."  
"Huh. I've never picked up a book."  
"You haven't?"  
"I'm illiterate. I never learnt how to read or write."  
"Oh."  
Sirius leaned forward. "What do you mean, 'Oh'? You believed that?!"  
Remus looked a little pink in the cheeks. "I wasn't so sure. You don't seem to be very civilised to me."  
"Wow, now I'm a little insulted."  
Remus laughed. "Illiterate isn't that far from 'never picked up a book', Sirius. People say you can see someone's soul through their eyes, but I think you can tell far more about them by the books they read."  
"I'm more into music."  
"Oh, what kind? Bach? Beethoven? My personal favourite is Wagner, although I'm not altogether content with his political standpoint, even if that luckily wasn't so much reflected in his works -"  
"That's why I listen to punk. Punk is honest, so it's easier to avoid anti-Semitic musicians."  
"So you know about Wagner's biography, but you listen to punk music? How could you possibly -"  
"It's because I'm cool, Remus. I break the rules your intellectual academic friends try to set up. I'm a rebel, I'm revolutionary."  
Remus laughed. It was a cute laugh.  
The bus finally pulled into a parking space after another half hour or so (where the tour guide requested Sirius put his clothes back on, which was met by some disgruntlement on his part). The first stop was a medieval cathedral, where Remus awkwardly trailed three metres behind Sirius, James, and Reg, and that Sirius appreciated only for its pleasantly cool interior, the second was a museum of Antique sculptures, where Reg got more orgasms from staring at a disfigured ancient Greek bust than he did from James in a year combined, and the third a tour through a shitty exhibition of Renaissance art that was mostly just photographs of the works, where Sirius made a point of "keeping his new mate company" instead of "listening to your fangirling about, like, Da Vinci and his mate Mussolini, Reg."  
"Mussolini wasn't a Renaissance painter, Sirius", said Reg.  
"Mussolini wasn't even a painter", added James.  
"Did you mean Michelan-"  
"Shut up, Reg. You get my point." And at that, Sirius turned dramatically on his heel and strutted off, dragging Remus behind him by his forearm.  
"Are you always this mean?"  
"I'm not mean, my freckled friend, I'm a rhetoric genius. It's called sarcasm."  
"Never heard of it", said Remus sarcastically.  
Sirius, who missed the tone of his voice, said haughtily, "Not a surprise. You're so conservatively upright."  
"And of course as an English student, I've never heard of the stylistic device of sarcasm."  
"Sarcasm isn't a stylistic device, it's a lifestyle. You don't learn that at university, not even Oxford. Especially not Oxford, actually."  
They made their way through the museum, and Sirius grew increasingly interested in Remus's face explaining the art instead of the art itself, until a large printed photography of a marble statue caught his eye. It seemed like a regular, boring depiction of Mary and baby Jesus at first glance, but something was off about it.  
"This statue is called Madonna Medici. It was made by Michelangelo, or as some people here call him, Mussolini, as a decorative element for a chapel. Classic Mother Mary."  
"No", said Sirius. "She isn't hugging the baby, and the baby isn't holding on to her. And she won't feed him. If that is a classic Mother Mary, then I guess Mother Mary was a lot like the shrivelled old excuse for a mother I had."  
"Your mother neglected you?", Remus asked apprehensively.  
Sirius snapped back into reality, and he shook his head to regain some of his posture. "Sometimes. Not a big deal. She bit it two years ago."  
That incident dampened their mood a little, until Remus saw a real fragment of a Michelangelo painting, and studied the paled image eagerly and thoroughly, copying its outlines vaguely into his sketchbook, but Sirius thought his drawing looked better than the original. When he told this to Remus, Remus looked a mixture of offended on Michelangelo's behalf, and proud on his own.  
As the group scurried from museum to museum, Sirius began to feel more and more captivated by the way Remus would very excitedly and hence somewhat incoherently voice his thoughts at the small paintings and fractured sculptures that no one else really bothered to look at, and by the time they sat down to devour the sandwiches they had brought for dinner, James and Sirius were both exhausted and very happy to see Remus and Reg decided to dump their loads of new nerdy knowledge on each other and leave their poor companions alone. Soon they ran off to settle a disagreement over the ductus used in one of Rembrandt's self portraits, and Sirius noticed that Remus's rear was just about as pretty to look at as his face.  
"I'm in love", he sighed.  
"With his backside or his personality?"  
"Why not both? I'm a complex dude, Prongs."  
Unfortunately, Sirius wasn't as good with love as he liked to pretend he was, at least the kind of love that wasn't just a purely physical, one time thing (which Remus was definitely way too good for!), so the mere thought of asking Remus out made him a pathetic nervous wreck and he wasn't able to talk much. He spent the entire rest of the evening trying to come up with a good way to ask Remus to go for a drink sometime that sounded the perfect mix of classy and cool, and by the time he'd finally found the words, he promptly felt Remus's head drop onto his shoulder once again. Sirius tried to relax, and ended up enjoying Remus's still very untainted scent so much that when the bus finally came to a halt and they were back where they'd started off that same morning, and Remus woke up, he had already forgotten what exactly he was going to say, and ended up saying nothing instead.  
He was in a very bad mood on the entire car ride back to James's place, and he slept poorly that night despite being very tired.  
"Morning, grumpy cat", said James when his best mate finally graced them with his presence at half past eleven.  
Regulus was sitting at the table fully dressed and reading the newspaper, and he looked disapprovingly at his elder brother, who wore nothing but his now stained boxers. Still, Reg stood up and walked up to Sirius and folded his arms.  
"You know, that Remus is a very educated and well-mannered man, and it's hard for me to know what I'm going to be exposing him to by doing this, but he asked me to hand you something, probably well aware of the fact you'd have lost it by now if he'd given it to you directly."  
And at that, Regulus offered Sirius a little piece of paper that looked like a torn-out page from a book. It had a pencil sketch on it, Sirius's own face smiling back at him, and below that, some digits that very much resembled a phone number.  
"Rembrandt's ductus my arse, they were plotting this", Sirius said, and couldn't keep his face from breaking into a massive grin.  
"Congratulations, mate, you got yourself your own academic", James said with a shit-eating grin.  
"Well, that's what it's like, being so irresistible. Guys giving you their numbers left and right."  
And still, this was the first one to really give him a warm, fuzzy feeling in the stomach as he dialled it, which turned into a heatwave to rival the one going on outside as he heard Remus's warm voice on the other end of the line.


End file.
